Cesarotti were fond of quoting him; Bettinelli imitated him in one of his poems; and in 1770 Giuseppe Pelli, the Dantist, introduced him as one of the characters in his Dialogues of the Dead. So then Italian men of letters of a century and a half ago, when there were no reviews of modern philology, and no volumes on comparative literature, were better acquainted with certain foreign authors than are the Italian writers of today. And I therefore share the translator’s hope that this new edition may help to win for Gulliver’s Travels its rightful place among the most famous works of European literature.
It is, without question, of the highest rank. Swift’s book, like most of the masterpieces of European imagination, is an adventurous journey which affords a pretext for a critical survey of humanity. So too the Odyssey, the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, and Faust are marvelous journeys and at the same time satires on mankind. The books I have named are but the greatest. The mere titles of those of the second rank would cover a page. In all these books we find the same scheme and the same design, varied according to variations in time and in genius—a review of human life (in most cases a sad and bitter review) effected by means of imaginary experiences which may be sublime or fascinating or ridiculous.
